Starting day at Look!

Just 50 years ago, I began to work for Look bindings, my biggest break in my entire life! I had been interviewed at the company’s aging headquarters and discovered a brand new factory on my first day there, with nice offices and located in a nice setting. 

I was rightfully excited and went to meet my future co-workers, a bunch of young executives working mostly in the export department. The domestic sales organization with refined tastes and an independent streak was headquartered in beautiful Annecy, back in the Alps, just like Salomon, our emerging and fierce competitor! 

As I walked into my job, there were no records or files about my new job as director of racing services. No list of racers per country, as one might have surmised, no budget either, no database of racers and tech reps, no budget, no correspondence with the various ski federations. Absolutely nothing! 

I guess they expected the new guy to be an imaginative self-starter, which I had to be given the circumstances. The Look owners in firing and/or parting ways with my predecessor had not even thought of extracting and salvaging that crucial information under whatever form it could exist, even though the entire program was costing them in today’s dollars the equivalent of almost 7 millions! 

An interesting way of running a business… Sure, René Plancherel, the guy in charge lived in Switzerland, which made it handy for paying some skiers under the table out of secret bank accounts in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, and had to keep all that illegal activity away from prying eyes! I was further summoned by the owner not to contact or talk to Plancherel under any circumstances. 

Yet, now I had the job and had no other alternative than simply walking out on my first day, or making it work. I chose the latter and managed to survive with that agonizing company for eight years before it finally expired.